Throwback Thursdayn't - GT S1 Championship Battle

After hosting dozens of racing events in the official Foxzie server, Mat decided to create his own racing division called MCRO - short for Mat's CDT Racing Orginazation. Many of CDT's greats at that time would race there, including SorJarwai, jakexander, Sky, quacksinoodle, EGGNOFF232 and more. The first ever season of MCRO would see an interesting battle between Egg and thejohn, which is fondly remembered as MCRO's only "real" championship battle so far.

Race 1

I've already reviewed the first race in the previous Throwback Thrusdayn't, so I will not go really deep into details as you can just read that article instead. Anyway, the first race saw hobryder_3 get a suprise pole position, with jake, Sor and quack coming close. Interestingly enough, both Egg and john were absent at the quali - however john joined during the grid formation.

The race started and to (almost) noone's suprise - Sor led the race with john getting close to him. However, John took the lead on lap 7, but only kept it for that lap as Sor caught up quickly. John didn't give up though and caught up to Sor, but crashed at the final corner on lap 16 and lap 21, eventually dropping to P4. Sor was cruising in P1, however it didn't take long for john to catch up to the leader, as he took the lead on lap 37. And from that lap john just started cruising to victory with Sor not being able to keep up with him in the end. John won that race with Sor coming in 2nd and Vark (suprisingly) in 3rd

Race 2

The second race at the CDT City Race saw only 6/10 people come to the quali, with one of them leaving after qualifying. That left 5 people racing, and that included both Lamborghini drivers at the time (John and immortal), Egg, DisortionJayden and ItlogNgManok. Eventually, John got pole position with Egg coming in 2nd.

Unfortunely, as I don't have the full race recorded I cannot go in detail with it, but as far as we remember, in the beggining laps there was a battle for P1 between John, immortal and Egg which lasted quite long. John was leading with Egg and immortal coming close, however a good few laps later Egg started catching up and eventually caught up to John and took the lead, but the battle was still on.

On lap 45 however, it was decided that the race will be finished as Itlog disconnected, leaving only 4 people finishing the race. Egg won the race, with John coming in 2nd and immortal coming in 3rd. DisortionJayden finished last, lapped, but he did get good points as he finished 4th. John led the championship with 27 points, Egg came second with 15 points and Sor had 12 points

Race 3

Race 3 at the CDT Mountain Race had to be delayed twice - first time due to a lack of people coming and second time due to Mat's timing issues. It eventually happened 2 weeks after the original date. We have even less footage from this race, so it will be described shortly as I don't remember much from it.

This race saw MCRO's first ever 1 lap quali - with Sor taking the pole position and john coming 2nd. Egg did not attend the quali, which resulted with him starting in the back.

The race started and again, we had nice battles for P1 between Sor, Egg and John, with him coming ahead most of the times and eventually creating a gap between P2. In meantime, there were still multiple battles - between Aston teammates Sor and Oblivious and between Nissan teammates - DisortionJayden and Karl. John went ahead and won the race, with Egg coming 2nd and Sor coming 3rd. John at the moment had 42 points, Egg had 27 and Sor had 21 points. At this point it was mostly sure that John would win the championship

Race 4

Funnily enough, race 4 happened only a day after the previous race - and saw John not attending the race which definetely changed the championship battle a bit. It was also the first MCRO race on a custom circuit - "CDT-Polis Street Course".

In quali, Sor got pole position with Egg coming in 2nd and Avith, at-the-time MCRO rookie (but not a CDT Racing rookie as he had some experience prior), coming 3rd. John's teammate, immortal qualified 4th.

The race started and Sor was battling with Avith, with Egg sometimes coming close. Avith was actually doing pretty well, sometimes leading the race, but Sor kept leading most of the times. Midway through, it was sure that one of the Astons would take the victory, but then Egg caught up and during the closing laps, Sor was distracted by chat bubbles, dropping him to P3, behind his teammate Avith. This resulted him in quitting MCRO Racing for good, as not only he was really frustrated by the chat bubbles, but also set his goal of winning this race, which he failed to do. He even skipped the podium celebrations.

Back to the podium - Egg won the race and Avith came 2nd. That meant john and Egg had the same amount of points (42 points), making the championship battle better than ever. Sor had 21 points, however since he quit MCRO he won't be battling anymore, leaving immortal (14 points) and Avith (12 points) as contenders for the P3 in the championship

Race 5

After a 2 week break and a CDT Map Update, MCRO was back with its 5th Race - and this time around I have the footage of it, so I'm able to go deeper into details. During the break there were some changes - Nissan changed into Lexus Racing and since the new map happened, all race tracks had to be re-done.

In quali, John got pole, however, a Lexus LFA of DisortionJayden came 2nd, making it the best quali result for the team. Unfortunetaly, Egg crashed on the final corner, which dropped him to P7.

The race started, and we saw John, Egg and DisortionJayden get really close, with Disortion getting the lead, but not for long. He eventually dropped further thanks to car's performance, but Egg was still battling John. On lap 12, Egg went and created quite a gap between P2. However, on lap 16, John has caught up and took the lead - not for long though as on lap 19 John lost the lead again. Then, Egg started to build a gap, again - on lap 29 he had a 7-8 second lead over John!

On lap 40, with only 5 drivers racing Egg was losing the gap he had made, with him now leading by only 2 seconds. John was coming really close to Egg, but during the final 2 laps he kinda lost his pace which led to Egg winning the race, and John coming 2nd. DisBruh, aka player10362 has done really well too, scoring his first podium in MCRO, as he finished 3rd.

Egg at that point has started leading the championship with 57 points, with John having 54 points. It was possible that if Egg finishes 2nd and John wins the next race, they'll be equal on points, with both of them having 3 wins and 2 podiums if the situation happens. It was requested to do a 1v1 race, which would've been really interesting, however since John at the time had 2 pole positions while Egg had none if they'd be equal on points John would win the championship.

Race 6 - Season Finale

The tension was on as we reached the season finale on the new CDT Circuit race - and this time around, McLaren had a new car - Ferrari SF90. Unfortunely, I (Mat) wasn't able to host the race, so I don't have any race footage. Vark hosted that race, but he wasn't able to record, so again, this will be a short description of what happened in the title decider finale.

Quali - it was a 1 lap quali again, with John winning it with a 2 second lead over P2 of GOGO, with Egg coming in 3rd, only 0.1s behind P2.

The race started, and it was john absolutely dominate the race with him lapping everyone except the top 3 in just 20 laps. The lambo of john dominated so badly that a safety car was brought and everyone was unlapped - but it was for nothing as john dominated again. On lap 40, another safety car was brought up, and with 10 laps to go, john dominated the race for the 3rd time and won. Egg in the end finished P3, which meant that he had 66 points, while John had 69 points (nice). John won MCRO's first ever championship on the final race with pretty much ease. And to everyone's suprise GOGO came 2nd in a SF90, which had done its first race. This was his only podium, as in S2 he struggled to even get into points, finishing last really often.

GT S1 will be remembered as the only "real" championship battle in MCRO, as later season would have some battles in the races, however they'd be dominated by 1 driver or team, most of the times. The closest we've got to GT S1 was the F3 S1 which was ~5 months ago as of the time when I'm writing this article. First races had some hope, however later it was just pure Dark Horse/Syrz domination, with 1 or 2 wins in between. With both Hypercar S2 and F1 S1 not giving any championship battle hopes, we'd need to wait until S5 to see if there is any hope for a championship battle like that.